Optical properties of polycarbonate/styrene-co-acrylonitrile blends: effects of molecular weight of the matrix.

In this paper, the effects of the molecular weight of a polycarbonate (PC) matrix on the phase morphology and optical properties of a PC/styrene-co-acrylonitrile (SAN) blend were investigated. A scanning electron microscope is used to analyze the phase morphology of the blends, and Mie scattering theory is used to analyze the changing laws of the optical properties of PC/SAN blends with the increasing of PC molecular weight. Results show that the average particle diameter is not strongly changed with different PC molecular weight because the values of the viscosity ratios are very close to each other. But it is obvious that the number of large particles gradually reduced while small particles (especially d<2  μm) significantly increased with the increasing of PC molecular weight. And the increase in small particles will result in an increase in backward scattering so the transmittance of PC/SAN blends decreases with the increase of PC molecular weight. However, the balance of the scattering coefficients and the number concentration of particles eventually lead to the haze of the blends being very close, despite having different PC molecular weights. Meanwhile, the photographs of scattering patterns indicate that the PC/SAN blends whose component weight ratios are fixed at 70:30 have excellent antiglare properties, despite the changes in molecular weight of the PC matrix.